Rajiv Malhotra: A Hindu View of Christian Yoga.

This excellent article by a yoga practitioner and scholar takes the point of view that yoga is in fact incompatible with certain key characteristics of the Christian mindset, especially its tendency towards historicism and body-denial.

Erosion wears rock-hard ruts that wrongly seem eternal, just like action (karma) wears patterns (samskara) into our character that wrongly seem ‘fixed’ forever’

The tendency to repeat is perhaps the single greatest problem in human life. It shows up strongly in addictive behavior, where, the human is caught in the process of looking forward to a past satisfaction. This is effectively the same thing as living ‘in time’ for most of us humans. Freud called it the ‘repetition compulsion,’ and traced both religious rituals and obsessive neurosis to this tendency.

Yoga seeks to eliminate unconscious repetition sequences, and substitute more open-ended programs for exploring and interacting with the world. Until this happens, we will continue to live in the house of past-future mirrors that is ‘normal’ human life.

Indian traditions provide a vocabulary that can help displace unpleasant repetition-forms with more adaptive patterns. In yoga theory and practice, what Freud called the ‘repetition compulsion’ is karma. In the karmic schema, we repeat a given experience until we fully attend to all its aspects in the present moment. It is continually re-made as long as we remain ignorant of the fact that we make it through our obsessions. As long as we pine for the past and hanker for the future, what Krishnamurti called the ‘flame of attention’ cannot burn away the illusory cobwebs of time. So the central idea is, as always, attention applied to the stream of awareness in the present moment – the goal of all meditative practice.

Yoga philosophy shows the path to the present by revealing how the dynamics of karma and repetition work. In yoga, it all takes place through a psychological process centered on something called samskara-s or ‘formations.’ Think of the samskara-s as irrigation ditches in which the water of karma flows. Over time, the water of action wears them deeper and deeper. With each cut, these channels come to seem more and more like ‘given’ aspects of nature – despite the fact that only habit creates them. Once made, however, they are both the structure and the means of repetition. Under these conditions, it’s easy to see how a habit-created world seem like ‘just the way it is.’

The syllable OM is a powerful device used to control mental patterns. It should be generated internally and perceived ‘externally’ as a sound

Yoga interposes an intentionally-chosen symbolic model for experience in the habit-stream. This model can be any of the tools in the yoga toolbox, from posture to chanting. The content of the practice is certainly significant, for different people respond differently to similar methods. The precise content of the meditative discipline, however, is but far important than the mere fact of its regular, rhythmic repetition.

When are the problem and the solution the same thing? In repeating patterns.

This regular, rhythmic repetition substitutes a new ‘standing waveform’ for the old habit-model. In this way, you not only discover that your world can change – you discover that you can do it yourself – provided you understand that the problem and the solution are the same thing!

Class brings yoga into nature zone | mydesert.com | The Desert Sun.

Yoga and nature immersion are parallel practices. There is a mysterious term in the first chapter of the Yoga Sutra – the term is prakrti-laya, or ‘absorbed in nature.’ I have been fascinated by this term for many years, since it seemed to describe a set of experiences that I had with the assistance of nature-immersion during the 1980′s under the influence of mind-body practice and Colorado’s high wilderness.

Before anything else, I want to acknowledge what is obvious. To practice yoga outdoors in the healthful air of Palm Springs – as does this remarkable group of southern California yogis – is certainly a good thing.

The teacher’s heart is just as obviously in the right place. Nonetheless, it is very important to emphasize that, in yoga thought, there is much more to Tree Pose, for example, than the ‘be the tree’ imperative. This symbolic content is important and powerful, and is not merely an adjunct to yoga asana. Yoga knowledge is the complement of yoga action, the Shiva to its Shakti, to use traditional terms.

When properly integrated, symbolic and active components reinforce one another to generate yogic experience (yogi-pratyaksha). Here, the fascinating, multi-layered symbolism surrounding the Tree in yoga thought allows the mind to attend to detail in the same way that the body attends to detail.In this mind-body practice, physical action and symbolic knowledge feed-back into one another. This mutual mirroring creates conditions proper to the experience where mind and body, Ha (sun) and Tha (moon), in-breath and out-breath, become one – and there, time (kala) disappears and the the mind (citta) identical with the breath (prana) enters the void (shunya).

The issue is not of truth, but of method – how best to unite mind and body? For those with a symbolic intelligence, bridging the two becomes an almost mind-less matter.

On Faith Panelists Blog: A Metaphorical Journey… of Transformation – Anju Bhargava.

Especially with respect to yoga, I believe that Indian-Americans have a real responsibility to share  ‘in-culture understanding’ with those who are just beginning to explore this toolbox of techniques for navigating awareness through this place we call the world.

Strangely, I’ve found recent immigrants (at American Hindu temples, for example) less knowledgeable about their own traditions than studious westerners – but as you point out the academic perspective certainly skews things.

i’m an ex-professor of sanskrit and South Asian religion currently involved in a project to bring authentic Indian yoga to a land obsessed with brands, stars and outward appearance. I’d be interested to know your take on this situation.

Kind Regards,
jeffdurham@yogasciences.com

Is Science A Belief? Is Religion A Science? Recent Research.

Many intriguing and problematic things here – but perhaps the central lesson is that the brain takes posited thoughts as percepts. So for a ‘believer’ in the posited thought, what an outsider calls ‘belief’ the insider would call a perception of ‘what is.’

The difference may be ‘reality-testing,’ but that of course begs the question (as bill clinton might say) what ‘what is’ is.

Psychologists Explore Religion, Morality Link | Christianpost.com.

Recent research suggests that moral judgment and religious doctrine vary independently.

We need not subscribe to literalist dogma to properly evaluate our actions – this capacity seems hard-wired into our social brains.

But does this apparent hard-wiring take place through natural darwinian evolution, or some inheritance of social processes? Recent research suggests the latter can engrave itself on neural structures. So the nature/nurture question remains open here.

The Jewish Tree of Life is a fully-integrated, multi-media mystic symbol system, comparable to the Chakra system in Yoga

Religions are deeply interwoven symbol-systems. Like their component symbolic complexes, religions are neither true nor false: they are reality-creating systems. They create a cultural world as our adaptive niche, and then project this culturally-mediated world externally as something real and objective ‘out there – despite that our culture-worlds are in fact an active creation of our awareness. To forget this process results in a state called ‘alienation.’

The state of alienation creates the illusion that we are separate from the world. It is responsible for an immense amount of the suffering – if you interpret the principle radically, perhaps all of it.

Unfortunately, culture requires alienation if its structures are to be taken seriously as independent ‘realities.’ Since we are all enmeshed in cultural matrices we experience as ‘realities,’ to see beyond them might seem a doomed enterprise.

There is a bright spot, however, for the nature of the illusion is that it changes when you see it – so it can be quickly reversed simply by seeing how it works. Here’s a run-down. First, humans have experiences that transcend normal awareness, perhaps in dream states. Then, they we formulate these experiences into systems, building them up in an ‘anabolic’ manner. This is how we get every symbolic system, from religions and sciences to that personal symbol-system that is the ‘self.’

Systems of this type ‘work’ so long as they allow people to predict and control experience. Over time, however, these systems lose their relevance to present conditions. Ideology, like biology, is subject to the law of entropy. Challenge, opposition, variation, innovation, rebellion – all of these forces tear down old ideologies ‘katabolically,’ while order-generating forces ‘anabolically’ reformulate the disintegrated system’s components. These two phases of creation are like the systole and diastole of the heartbeat – the rhythmic force that propels religion through time. This is how symbol-systems actively re-create tradition.

The active creation of tradition has two phases: as symbolic thought, and as actual practice. By exploring the symbolic thought of reality-creating traditions, you discover HOW the process of reality-creation works historically. By consistently practicing the symbolic thought of a reality-creating tradition, you discover THAT the process works individually.

Here, observation and application are revealed as complementary principles. First, as an observer, you discover the principles by which symbol guides experience. Then as a practitioner and member of the community, you apply these principles to your own life. As your life changes, you ‘prove’ the principles you practice. Then, something more. As you communicate your knowledge and experience, it (and you) become part of the tradition.

This is very exciting – you begin to discover something that everyone from sociologists like Peter Berger to Australian Dreamtime cultures know well: that we human beings keep culture’s virtual world going by continually creating and recreating it.

This Dreamtime Pathway from Australia is both a symbol and a map

Humans are symbol-making creatures. Symbolic expression permeates our lives, giving them meaning and order. When concentrated and coordinated, symbols begin to form systems. When webbed together into systems, symbols start to function in a new way: they begin to generate and sustain the experience of reality.

Applied at the most diffuse level, symbol-systems transform individuals across time into a virtual unity – a culture. At a more concentrated level, they become religious systems. Here, the tool that orders ordinary experience generates an ultra-world experienced as more permanent and more real than consensus reality.

All of this happens unconsciously. What happens when tools of symbolic reality-creation become conscious? If the goals are completely secular, this knowledge becomes advertising and propaganda: the conscious use of symbolism to manipulate other minds. If, however, the conscious use of symbolism remains ‘sacred,’ that is, ‘ if it is used not to manipulate minds but to enhance awareness, it becomes a yogic or mystical system.

In ‘religions,’ however, these two motivations – manipulation and evolution – occur side-by-side. This seeming contradiction deep in the category of ‘religion’ makes it difficult to address – but address it we must, for the issue of ‘religion’ looms large in yoga thought these days.

There are pragmatic social concerns here; if yoga is a religion, it cannot make claims to universality, whether on the basis of common human physiology psychology. If yoga is not a religion, it can be regulated and taxed like any other educational program.

The issue of ‘religion’ raises important psychological issues for the individual too. Especially in the United States, many yoga explorers found their practice through dissatisfaction with mainstream theist traditions – especially a conviction that effort-won experience is a more reliable guide than blind belief in a credo.  Similarly, since yoga is an experimental system, it shares with science the conviction that only through observation can we learn ‘what is.’

Most importantly, however, religions are reality-shaping systems. In the next post, I’ll show you how the process works. In seeing it, you may be able to see how it works in your own awareness as well.

How do you tell the real thing? You infer its genuineness by the standardized marks it bears

One key question lies at the heart of all human religion, spirituality, science, and even states of awareness in general: how do you tell the real thing from a fake?

In ancient India, where yogic systems developed, this issue was critical. False teachers literally capitalized on the credulous, accumulating money while they disappointed would-be seekers.

The same is true in the modern world. From Dianetics and now to Dahn, accusations of religious fraud abound. Other teachers personal lives’ reveal deep character flaws. Some of these flaws were harmful only to the teacher involved. Other situations were more exploitive.

From another angle, the Canadian teacher Anasakta Baba now claims all meditation teaching has failed in the west. What are we to make of this situation? Will the ‘real teachers’ please present themselves? There is a more fundamental question: how would know you the real thing if you encountered it?

The traditional guarantor of genuineness is lineage. If you know a certain teacher has trained in a certain school or with certain masters, you infer that person is genuine – just as you infer that a person is a genuine doctor from their medical degree.

So knowledge of genuineness comes only through inference. The goal of yoga, on the other hand, is to move from inferential, once-remove knowledge characteristic of consensus-reality knowledge to direct observing in the present – characteristic of yogic forms of knowledge.

To move from inference to observation is a fundamental goal of all yogas. It amounts to a move from an illusory, second-hand world into the actual. So an understanding of fraud and illusion will be a key element of yoga practice. By refining your understanding of fraud and illusion, you learn to recognize that the body-mind’s claims to be the ultimate horizon of reality are false.

From the Yogic perspective, we can extend the principle: the world itself is fraudulent when we interpret its various appearances as ‘real’ in any ultimate sense. For we know that the range of the real goes beyond the body, senses and mind. The electromagnetic spectrum, for example, extends far beyond our ability to perceive it directly.

In a similar way, our capacity for experience extends far beyond its apparent limitations. To claim otherwise is to claim you have the market cornered on reality. In this claim lies true religious fraud.

After all, you’re not who you think you are at all

If we are to see through the jillion illusions out of which the ‘real’ world is made, it is important to be curious about and to question appearances. A powerful means of interrogating illusion comes from the tradition of jnana yoga, the yoga of knowledge or wisdom. It does not necessarily involve memorization of anything very complicated, but it does require concentration on a question put to oneself.

One central technique of jnana yoga made famous by Ramakrishna involves the persistent interrogation of the internal dialogue (which CREATES the ego) with the reflexive question ‘who am I’? Like many of the yoga systems pioneered in the BG, jnana yoga consists in using what would otherwise be an obstacle against itself – in this case the internal dialogue, the tendency of the mind recursively to spin an ordering story about itself.

As the central plot element in this drama, you are going to ask the thing making your ‘me’ – “who is this ‘me’ you are creating?” Yes, it sounds like a strange question. No, it is not a zen koan. It is a pointed question you are putting to your own cognitive apparatus. After all, it is yours, and you have a right to know and direct its action. So ask the question. Do it three times, and make sure that you really try to find an answer.

Keep going, good job. Hopefully, you at least had a glimpse of something pretty powerful. If you are intrigued, continue the practice, ask it again and again. It is nonsense input and can be unsettling, so I advise an asana and pranayama regimen to restore bio-mental equilibrium.

With persistence, you’ll discover experientially and not just theoretically that you are not who you think you are, i.e., a body-mind organism. Instead, you find that you are more than your physical body-mind. Its apparent limitations and boundaries, like external ‘reality,’ are a simulation, a virtuality, a projection. Really, you are no projection but the projector.